Harry Potter and the Pillar of Autumn
by Some Moron
Summary: Suppose the world-famous sci-fi shooter, Halo: Combat Evolved, were designed to play like EA Games' PC rendition of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  The adventure would unfold something like this.
1. Chapter 1:  The Pillar Express

Disclaimers: I don't own Harry Potter or Halo, not that I am against the thought of it.

CHAPTER ONE: The Pillar Express

There was nothing about the poorly textured sky that night to suggest that strange and mysterious things would start happening as soon as this stupid cut scene was over.

A proud, luxurious starship (albeit a butt-ugly one) glided through the vast expanses of space, accompanied by much smaller fighter crafts that resembled the Batman logo. From the bridge of his starship, Captain Jacob Keyes stared out the window at the strange artifact that his ship had unearthed... er, unspaced. It was an incredibly boring job, but hey, the UNSC had paid him big bucks to stand on the bridge and stare out the window!

But this was just a smidgeon more interesting than any previous missions. Keyes studied the construction of the artifact. It was a gigantic ring – the inside surface bearing what resembled Earth-like terrain. The ring was supposedly 10,000 miles in diameter (almost as big as Earth), but whoever had stuck it there had done a terrible job with the graphics, since it looked maybe a quarter mile wide at the most.

"Cortana," asked the captain's pitiful voice actor, "What exactly am I looking at?" He asked it in slightly different words, but we prefer a G rating. The _Autumn_'s built-in AI, a holographic blue chick named Cortana (obviously), spoke up with her identification of the artifact.

"It's a gigantic ring, 10,000 miles in diameter, with an inside surface bearing what resembles Earth-like terrain," she said. Five hundred years of careful planning and programming to create an intelligent artifical being, and that's the best they could come up with. "Sensors indicate that the outside is black, with lots of small lit windows on it, and the inside is green, white, and blue, and it's a ring...that's gigantic...and looks like Earth."

Captain Keyes face-palmed and yanked out Cortana's power cord. He soon realized that it would have been better simply to interrupt and call her "Captain Obvious," because without her little-known usefulness, the ship's computer network shut itself down, and took the ship's protective shields with it. Just at that moment, a ship controlled by the enemy alien collective, the Covenant, finished a Slipspace jump and rammed the side of the Pillar of Autumn, destroying the ship's newly remodeled bathrooms. Yes, shutting off the ship's AI was not a tremendously smart move.

So, after doing his best to shift the blame to someone else, Captain Keyes rebooted the little blue thorn in his side. "You have selected Microsoft Anna – English, United Nations Space Command – as the computer's default voice," she said. "You have selected Microsoft Cortana as the computer's default body."

After it seemed like she must be done loading software, Keyes tried to ask her to prepare the ship for combat, but was immediately interrupted. "You have selected Microsoft Purple-Chick-With-An-Attitude as the computer's default human interface behavior." _Forget it._ Keyes pressed the "Make Cortana Shut Up" button, and contacted the security department himself. The response was not pleasing. He had counted on the Master Chief fighting through all the waves of Covenant without a scratch, and coming to the bridge to save his butt. Turns out they'd forgotten him on Reach. What was he going to do now?

_Create a perfect plot hole_, that's what he'd do. A senseless crossover fanfiction would solve this problem easily! He radioed to the cryobay and requested that he be sent whoever might help kick some alien hindquarters.

Two calls to tech support, three hours, and two plot holes later, a group of three entirely unlikely fighters stood in Cryobay 2. All three were aged roughly 13, and clad in black robes trimmed in red. (This was all they EVER wore, because apparently the game designers were too lazy to come up with models of them wearing other outfits.) On the far left was a dark-haired boy wearing round glasses that appeared to have no lenses whatsoever. To the far right was a ginger kid. Standing between them was a girl whose hair was obviously way too light, and who otherwise just looked totally dreadful in comparison with how she looked in the Playstation 2 version of this game. Fast asleep in a corner was the cryobay technician, for entirely unknown reasons.

The ginger kid, who had a newspaper in his hand and a rat on his shoulder for some reason, spoke up first. "It says here that the Covenant forces epically nuked the wizard planet, Reach!"

"No one's ever blown up a planet before!" came the alarmed response from the erroneously blond girl. The red-haired boy's overpaid voice actor kept reading. "Twelve years ago, a huge blue monster thingy murdered thirteen people with a single green laser blast thing! Well, at least we'll be safe on Halo." He looked up at his friend, the dark-haired kid with the Marathon-symbol-shaped scar on his forehead. "What's wrong, Harry?"

"Ron," replied Harry, "I overheard your dad talking about the Covenant forces last night. The Ministry of Magic thinks they're after me!"

"The Covvies blew up Reach to come after you?" asked Hermione, the poorly-animated girl. "Oh, Harry, you'll have to be really, really careful. Don't go looking for trouble!"

"I don't go looking for trouble. Trouble usually finds me!"

"But they'll catch them, won't they?" continued the disgrace of PC gaming. "I mean, they've got Master Chief looking out for them, too!"

At that moment, an antimatter charge struck the ship, sending a shudder through its hallways. _She's starting to shudder_. The rat on Ron's shoulder, much more startled than any humans, leaped off his perch and ran through a very convenient crack under the door of Cryobay 2. "Scabbers! Come back!" called out the ginger kid, before he turned to the light golden-haired brunette. "Can't you keep that monster under control?"

"Calm down, Ron," answered Hermione. "You don't want to wake Professor - er, that guy who's still obliviously sleeping in the corner!"

"Don't worry, Ron," said Harry. "We'll help you find Scabbers." He walked up to the door with his friends following closely behind, but somehow not treading on his heels. As he came within seven feet of the locked door, Hermione spoke up.

"You can cast Alohomora to open **that** door, Harry. Hold down the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON to activate your wand."

"Keep holding while you move the mouse to aim your wand," chimed in Ron.

"Can't I just walk up to it and press the "UNLOCK" button?"

"Well, yes, but that's the boring way to do it."

So the irate, mistaken-for-a-seven-year-old user held down the left mouse button, and Harry began circling his wand in the air with his right hand and randomly flexing the fingers on his left hand, in a stance that resembled an Elite with an energy sword, except not looking totally sweet. A pulsating purple lock appeared over the door's control panel.

"That's it!" chimed in Ron. "Now release the button, and you'll cast the spell!" Harry swung the wand in towards the door and shouted, "ALOHOMORA!" The door made a sound that uncharacteristically resembled an old 21st-century lock, and opened with a much more characteristic _SHHH_. The little ratfink made some squeaking noises (having been just slightly behind the door, thumbing his nose) and ran off, apparently too fast for three ridiculously athletic 13-year-olds to catch.

Harry stepped through the door, followed by his equally digital friends who were no smarter than the space marines. He ran to the door at the end of the hallway (since everybody runs everwhere...nobody ever walks), targeting it with the ambiguous "Cast Spell" button. Just as the three got close, an explosion blew the door out of its sliding frame, reducing the three friends' health by one bar. "Oh, no," commented Ron. "It looks like we're gonna be stuck in this hallway, with nothing but a broken door on one side and a seemingly pointless cupboard on the other!" Then he thought for a moment. "Wait a minute...!" He scratched his head in an unrealistic way that was done way better in the PS2 version of the game.

A giant cupboard with a lock symbol on it was probably _not_ pointless, so the trio made their way (by running...surprise surprise) to the other side of the hallway. Ron walked up to the cupboard (since the player was suddenly controlling him now, despite not having pressed any buttons that indicated any desire to do so) and cast Alohomora on it. The wooden doors flew open with such force that they should have broken off and made a much louder noise, and revealed a stone statue inside.

"Umm... what's that thing?" asked Ron, motioning towards the object which was obviously a gargoyle. "It's a gargoyle, of course!" responded Hermione, for some reason lacking the sarcasm that anyone else would have used. "Cast Lumos at it, Ron," added Harry, "and a secret area will light up!"

So Ron stood in front of the statue and cast Lumos. Lumos is the most retarded spell in the entire PC version of Harry Potter. What does it do in the movie? It casts light. Lights up the wand tip and brightens the room. Or it fends off the Devil's Snare. That's all the Lumos does in the canonical Harry Potter world. And that's all it does in the PS2 version of the game, where they did everything right. For some idiotic reason, however, the PC version of Lumos causes objects to appear and certain walls to become semi-transparent so you can walk through them. Also, sometimes it creates bridges and platforms (which usually move) made entirely of light. Bullcrap! LUMOS DOES NOT MAKE LIGHT BRIDGES! FORERUNNER LIGHT-BRIDGE GENERATORS MAKE LIGHT BRIDGES!

So, after the Writer was done ranting, a section of the solid metal wall went semi-transparent, with a sparkling gold light illuminating the border to make it more obvious for players who are blind. The three grass-is-greener-on-the-PS2 kids walked through the wall, but found the pathway blocked by fallen luggage that was almost two feet high.

"You can climb **over** this luggage, Ron," commented Hermione during a cut scene that the player furiously tried to skip. "You just have to walk up to it, and you'll be able to start climbing!" So Ron walked into the crates and fell flat on his face, because even an idiot can figure out that you can't climb something just by walking into it. Eventually, he found the jump button. Using exaggerated grunting noises, he jumped over the crates into the second hallway that had been revealed. Harry and Hermione followed, and for some reason, _they_ could jump and land silently. For now.

The way to the Pillar of Autumn's bridge was to the right, but the player chose to go left, since – like any experienced player of a Harry Potter PC game – he knew there was an important reward in that direction. Ron reached the end of the hallway first, discovering a treasure chest. No clue exactly _why_ there would a treasure chest there, of all places, and a treasure chest full of jelly beans, at that. But then, it makes little sense that there would be bean-filled chests hidden deep within the Chamber of Secrets, so compared to that, a wooden chest with a lock that can be opened only with magic makes a **lot** of sense in a dark hallway of a starship!

So Ron cast Alohomora on the chest. It made the same "lock" noise as the door did earlier, and then the lid flew open, throwing the chest half a foot into the air before it came down in exactly the same spot. Out flew seven jelly beans. Huge foot-high jelly beans that came to rest at odd angles, and never properly on the floor. "Those are Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans," explained Harry, even though Ron had known about them for at least the last two years. "We should collect as many as we can, as they'll come in handy later!" So the three friends walked over the beans and caused them to disappear with a hiss and some colored particles. Apparently, this placed the beans in a really huge collective pocket that everyone had equal access to.

So after they'd collected the tooth-rotting sweets, the trio moved to the door on the other side of the hallway. This one opened automatically. Halfway to the next door, the three children suddenly became startled. A fraction of a second later, an explosion blew away part of the wall to the right. They continued – not caring _that_ much – and entered the room behind the door. A large stone block to the left hindered further progress. "Hmm," said Ron. "I suppose we'll have to **push** this thing out of the way."

"Or," countered Hermione, noticing the bright red symbol resembling a chevron on the rock, "**one** of us could cast Depulso!" Depulso is the _second_ most retarded spell in Harry Potter 3. It has virtually the same function as Flipendo, which every player has used and loved since the original game. And of course they kept it for the PS2 version, but do WE get to keep it? No! PC users get the crappy Depulso! Oh, and the game developers stole the traditional logo of the Rictusempra spell for this one.

Hermione stepped forward and faced the rock, causing the player to face-palm once again, because this was the _second_ time he'd been suddenly forced to control a different character even though he didn't want to. Grudgingly, he held down the mouse button, and Hermione cast the lousy Knock-Back Spell's Understudy at the rock, which immediately flew out of the way. The hallway beyond was much wider and higher, and showed signs of an actual battle. A group of space marines fought a group of Elites and tried to push them back behind a soon-to-close door. The marines were exactly the same height as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and, under their steel armor, wore the same clothes, save for the robes.

Of course, these soldiers were not the only people in the hall. They were accompanied by a group of civilians wearing red-and-black robes and Hogwarts uniforms. Surprise! While the soldiers (who couldn't hit the broadside of a planet) were keeping the aliens busy, the civilians ran around and said retarded things such as "Help me help you!"

Nobody, human or Covenant, was actually injured, due in part to the marines' terrible aim and the fact that some of them were using SMGs. The blast door closed and locked out the aliens – all but one Elite Major. Soldiers bombarded him with gunfire from all sides, causing him to lose his stamina and faint. (Nobody dies in this game. Everything goes unconscious, gets knocked out, or faints. Guess they wanted it to be kid-friendly. Also, you don't have "health," you have "stamina," which you can't even pronounce without some practice.)

After they'd knocked out the alien enemy, the people were left with nothing more to do. The soldier in the front turned to the trio. "Master Chief, sir!" he said, obviously scripted. "The situation is secure here! You're probably needed somewhere else!"

Hermione (still the only one the player could control) led her friends to the nearby doorway into a pitch-black passageway. She would've brightened it up by casting Lumos, but of course it had been given a screwed-up function in the PC version, a move that made the game designers laugh their rear-ends off. As the three reached the next doorway, the door slid open and revealed an angry Elite armed with a plasma pistol, triggering a sharp, startling music cue.

"Everyone cast Rictusempra!" shouted Harry, and the three started casting the spell whose symbol had mysteriously changed shape and color since the previous game. The Elite tried to fend off the attacks, but coupled with assault rifle fire from a group of marines around the corner, he was soon unconscious.

A few dimly-lit passageways later, the three encountered some totally random crates in a room similar to the site of the first battle. "We'll have to jump up to climb over those crates," commented Ron. "Right, then," responded the technically-a-brunette. "You lead the way. Walk forward, toWARDs the crates, and press the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON!"

At this moment, the presense sitting just outside the Halo universe, a player named halo_player_117, was driven to bang his head against his desk, because he had specifically reassigned the jump button to the spacebar, but the game designers had epically failed to consider that maybe the characters shouldn't tell you to press keys that might get reassigned. But he recovered, and held down W while pressing the space bar.

Ron ran forwards and jumped, catching the top of the crates with his hands. He then climbed on top of the crates with the ease and grace of the most super-athletic SPARTAN-II in history. This from the same person who, seven minutes ago, couldn't run fast enough to catch a rat.

Some time and irritating bugs later, the trio arrived in yet another hallway in which marines engaged the Covenant. A soldier by the far door flagged down Harry, who was now in halo_player_117's control. "Sir!" he called out. "The Captain needs you _on_ the bridge, ASAP! Better follow me!" The three friends ran up to him, and he waited a full five seconds before leading them to the bridge. (This, however, can be blamed on a Halo bug, not a Harry Potter 3 PC bug.)

On the bridge, Harry shook hands with the Captain. "Captain Keyes," he said.

"Good to see you, Master Chief. Things aren't going well. Cortana did her best, but we-"

Cortana's blue avatar suddenly appeared on the pedestal beside the Captain. "ExCUSE me," she interrupted, "but the last thing I remember you doing was disconnecting my power. And you know what? That hurt my feelings! I haven't done a thing for you _since_. Everything we've accomplished on this ship was done by these brave, intelligent people on this bridge, sitting at computer screens and pressing buttons as if they're doing something useful! But they aren't! We haven't accomplished one single useful task on this entire ship. And do you know what? I'm sick of it! I'm going to work for your competitors!"

Before Captain Keyes could ask what she meant by "competitors," she vanished entirely from the ship's computer. Several hundred miles away, a mysterious, overly-talkative presence embedded itself in the computer system of a Covenant ship. It so surprised the alien captain that he took his eyes off the precious, ancient artifact – allowing the humans to evade his ships, land on the sacred ring, and DESECRATE IT WITH THEIR FILTHY FOOTSTEPS!11!1! (When explaining his failure to defend the ring to the Council, he blamed it on Master Chief and the Flood. He figured it was best not to mention that he found himself attracted to a certain holographic image.)

Well, since there was no more holographic AI to protect, there was also no specific need for Harry, Ron, and Hermione to be on the ship anymore, so Keyes sent them to the escape pods with the rest of the crew, intending to land the ship on the ring.

On the way to escape pod 61, the three encountered another Elite. When a bunch of spells failed to dispatch it, Ron picked up a grenade from a fallen marine and threw it at the Elite. The grenade exploded, piercing the alien's body with shrapnel fragments and causing it to faint.

This next part is spoken by the Harry Potter 3 narrator, so read it out loud with your nose pinched shut.

_Finally, Harry, Ron, and Hermione boarded the escape pod, which detached from the ship and made a beeline for the giant mood ring. The three friends were delighted to be back at Halo, and ready for a good time._

_Were it so easy._


	2. Chapter 2:  Warthogs

Well, even in the time since the last chapter, I still don't own Harry Potter or Halo. Still wish I did. Also: I know that the first class is Defense Against the Dark Arts, not Care of Magical Creatures... but the second level of Halo much more closely resembles CoMC.

CHAPTER TWO: WARTHOGS

The Bumblebee escape pod soared through the atmosphere of the unfamiliar ring, its hull glowing with poorly-animated fire. Exactly where it would land seemed quite certain – no doubt it would touch down dramatically by the edge of a cliff. But it was definitely not going slow enough for a soft landing. "We're coming in too fast!" shouted the pilot, confirming the suspicions of the occupants.

If the extra speed wasn't bad enough, the rear wings – designed to work like a parachute – immediately broke off. The pilot cursed, wondering why she'd _ever_ agreed to fly this pure-plastic pod. "Airbrake failure – they blew too early!" An emergency light flashed in the passenger area, warning all occupants to panic as loudly as possible. The pod crashed headlong into the ground and the screen whited out.

"Harry, Ron, can you hear me!"

Harry and Ron struggled to their feet, and turned in the direction of their friend's voice.

"At last...are you all right? Can you move?"

They'd already struggled to their feet. They could move.

"Yeah, we're fine, Hermione," said Harry.

"Where are you?" asked Ron. "I can't really see. It kinda blinded me when the screen went all white."

Hermione stepped out of the shadows and looked around. There had been several other soldiers with them when the pod had launched, but now, thanks to the crash, they'd all been knocked unconscious. "The others..." She glanced at the pod, with small bits of smoke coming out of random spots on the ship and the ground. "The impact...there's nothing we can do." But a few chocolate frogs would've helped!

The three walked around the outside of the pod and collected equipment – fragmentation wizard crackers, a few jelly beans, and the Carpe Retractum spellbook. Harry – currently under player control – noticed a Depulso tile sticking out of the nearby wall. When activated, the tile opened a secret portal in the nearby rock face, containing what must have been an ancient Forerunner treasure chest. A quick cast of Alohomora revealed that it contained a wizard card...a giant two-foot-tall wizard card that could stand on its thin edge, like the quarter in that one Twilight Zone episode.

**Sudo 'Aptgetee**

2516-2552

Pioneered the use of overcharged plasma pistols in the making of the Wiggenweld potion, which you can use in every Harry Potter PC game except this one.

Seriously, does anybody ever actually read their wizard cards, or is that just in YouTube walkthroughs? Anyhow, after they'd checked out the Folio Universitas, the trio crossed a long, railing-less bridge over a ridiculously deep chasm. Harry – halo_player_117 – reached the end of the bridge first, and quickly turned to the right. Ron followed in a straight line and made it to the end, but Hermione – lacking the basic intelligence to not cut the corner – walked off the edge of the steel bridge and plummeted 128 feet before disappearing and respawning back on the bridge.

"Warning," she said, oblivious to having just made a sub-amoeba's-intelligence blunder. "I've detected multiple Covenant dropships on approach. I'd recommend moving into those hills. If we're lucky, the Covenant will believe that everyone aboard this lifeboat fainted in the crash." Hey, _somebody_ had to fill in for the AI that had quit her job.

Sure enough, a loud hum soon pierced the air. I guess the Spirit dropships don't know the lyrics. A giant purple spork glided into view and landed near the abandoned drop ship, releasing a wave of Grunts and Elites. Harry tried to target them, but found that even though his wand's range could reach them (he could tell by the little yellow particles way across the gap), it was too far to cast a spell. However, it turns out there is really no point in dealing with the enemies that spawn way back there, so the three continued on through the brush.

Suddenly, they stopped dead in their tracks, their feet not properly parallel to the ground. Up ahead was a squad of three Grunts, led by – no, it couldn't be... the trio collectively gasped in poorly-animated shock. Leading the Covenant squad was a terribly-modeled image of Draco Malfoy.

"Well, look who it is," he announced. "It's Weasel, Grunge, and Potty."

"You stole that line from Peeves," snapped Harry. "You're supposed to list me first, then Ron, and you don't even mention Hermione, who for some reason isn't in the room when you say this line back in the first level."

"I should've known this pathetic excuse for a rat had something to do with _you_."

Ron glanced around, and realized that in all the confusion of trying to get to the bridge, they'd forgotten all about Scabbers. He'd probably died when the Pillar of Autumn landed on the ring. Oh, well. He was a bad guy in disguise anyway, so no serious harm done. Malfoy was oblivious, of course, and continued with his pre-programmed lines.

"Well, you're not gonna get past me this time! Right, guys?" The three Grunts agreed.

"Oh, yeah?" countered Harry. "I've beaten you multiple times when you tried to impede my progress in the last two games – why should that change now?"

"I'll tell ya why!" growled one of the Grunts in his deepest voice, the pitch still exceeding that of a decent falsetto. "'Cuz this time, he's got _**us**_ fightin' for him! And we're the best! We'll bite your kneecaps off!"

One Rictusempra spell later, Flipyap was on his back, groaning and muttering something about a food nipple. Furious, Malfoy cast a spell that produced a red beam – one of those really slow-moving beams that are a piece of cake to side-step, as long as you have the sense to use WASD instead of the arrow keys. (Oh, and I have lots of rants about the HP games' use of the arrow keys.) The spell missed by a mile, and rather than participate in the duel, Hermione ran up and melee'd Malfoy in the face, and apparently it was a terrific punch because he fell on his back, unconscious.

"LEADER FAINTED!" cried one of the two standing Grunts. "RUN AWAY!"

A couple Rictusempras took down the remaining midget Covenant soldiers and left the area clear for exploration. Halo players don't realize it, but the bushes in this area of the level are full of Every Flavor Beans. After collecting all the...er, collectibles, Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way through a narrow pathway into the next part of the level, stopping along the way to open another magic chest.

"ALOHOMORA!"

Inside were six beans and a Cauldron Cake – which, as Ron commented to no one in particular, "I'll bet they're worth _loads_ more than beans in Fred and George's shop!" Yes, I'm sure there are plenty of things worth more than beans. Apparently, nobody ever figures out the idea that maybe jelly beans, cauldron cakes, and pumpkin pasties are _edible_.

So, anyhow, after they'd collected everything, the three reached the second section of the map, in which a group of Marines engaged a group of Covenant. They just sat and watched, figuring it best not to get between bullets and superheated plasma. The Marines were winning the fight, but only because Harry Potter PC games always force you to play on Easy, except the boss levels of the first two games, where you're forced to play on Legendary.

They did a great job fending off the alien forces. Almost too great for the Covenant to bear, in fact. Just as a Marine beat the stamina out of the last Elite, the alien growled, "You hax0r n00b!"

After the threats were gone, the trio approached the structure that the Marines were using for cover. Sergeant Johnson came up to them. "It's a mess, Sir," he said. "We're scattered all over this valley. We called for evac, but... until you showed up, I thought we were **cooked**." Right, after they'd just beat down seven consecutive waves of aliens with no casualties.

Soon, a Pelican dropship arrived to deliver a Warthog and rescue any surviving soldiers. However, since everyone had survived the engagement with the Covenant, there wasn't enough room for all the Marines in the Pelican's passenger compartment, so it had to leave a few behind. Not that they seemed to care much.

The Warthog had exactly three seats, so the three Hogwarts Spartans boarded it. Harry took the driver's seat (or, rather, the "Driver seat"), since he was the current player character, and no AI can be trusted with driving a vehicle. Ron took the back seat with the chain gun turret, simply because he probably would.

Hermione took the side seat, intending simply to cast more spells at the aliens, since she was more skilled no more skilled at spells than anyone else. "You take the, um, spell seat," Ron had told her. "You know more spells than we do." Right, she knew _one_ more spell than the rest, and it was some useless one involving a rabbit and a dragon, which actually sounds like an episode of South Park.

So Harry pushed one of the Warthog's six pedals and the future jeep lurched forward (one of its four directions), triggering the "Flying Buckbeak" music cue even though it couldn't fly. Rather than drive down the safe, friendly downgrade into the valley below, he took the long way around, soon driving right off a roughly-100-foot cliff. "YEEE-HAAA!" shouted Ron, oblivious to the fact that they were all very likely to die in the impact with the ground.

The Warthog, traveling about 28,645 miles per hour downwards, finally impacted the ground with a harmless "bang", and the group continued onwards. As they reached a huge tunnel cut into the rock face, Hermione spoke up with her opinion of the structure. "This cave is not a natural formation," she said. "Someone built it...so it must _lead_ somewhere."

Sick of her Cortana-like commentary, Harry used a secret key combination, jumped halfway out of the driver seat, and, while steering with his left foot, held his hand over Hermione's mouth. Unfortunately, collision detection data did not affect a character's ability to talk, and she continued to drone about intercepting Covenant messages.

The group eventually reached a large underground room containing OVER 9000 Covenant aliens. "There are too many of them!" exclaimed Hermione. "Everyone cast Rictusempra!" shouted Harry, despite there would be only one person doing so, and 'Mione knocked the aliens harmlessly on their backs while Ron epically owned them with the mounted machine gun. Harry also did his part, turning a couple Elites into roadkill. Ahh, forget the fainting part.

Once the room had been cleared, Harry drove the Warthog up to the large gap. It wasn't going to be possible to jump – no ramps or anything. There was a small discolored floor tile just before the gap, and it obviously hid a Spongify tile – but how to get it?

Ron, who had automatically learned the Carpe Retractum spell by crash-landing on Halo, spotted a glowing blue orb high in the air, mounted to a rope. He cast the Ron-only spell on it, pulling and releasing it and triggering a second one to sprout out of the floor on the far end of the ledge. This one was fastened down, and when he cast the spell, he promptly flew through the air and landed on the far platform.

From there, he quickly spotted a pair of Depulso tiles – but it required two people to cast at once. Someone else would have to find a way across the gap – and nobody else knew the Carpe Retractum spell, for some reason.

So, the camera zipped back to the first platform and came to rest above and behind Hermione's head. This was a perfect opportunity for that crappy spell she can use in this game! She located a statue of an ugly dragon and cast Draconifors on it, turning it into a real live ugly dragon that she could now control (badly). She collected the jelly beans and floating pumpkins that were conveniently placed around the Fireball Pickup, and looked for the equally convenient Dragon Platform Thing.

Finding one, she set the dragon down in front of the torch and pressed the LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. The pathetic dragon breathed a burst of flame that lit the torch, and somehow, this caused the aforementioned floor tile to slide away, revealing that Spongify tile. Harry and Hermione used it to bounce across the gap, collecting not only an arc of jelly beans, but a Wizard Card as well!

**John Smith 117**

2511-2519

Obscure Hogwarts enrollee who mysteriously died of neural problems. Believed to be a clone.

The downside to this bunch of moves was that the three no longer had their Warthog, and now had to _walk_ all the way through the rest of the level. To halo_player_117's relief, the screen narrowed just as they reached the entrance to the next tunnel, and the next cutscene started. A totally boring, poorly written, unskippable cutscene, but a cutscene nonetheless.

"It's almost time for Care of Magical Creatures Class!" exclaimed Hermione, quite out of context. "And Hagrid's teaching this year," added Harry. They (thankfully) time-warped to the end of the tunnel, stepping out into the daylight near another poorly-animated stream. A group of students (and a few Covenant as well) had already gathered in the distance, led by a terribly-designed model of Hagrid.

But a more interesting issue at hand was the action coming from the right. People were running out of the woods through a trail and screaming, chased by the Covenant's air soldiers. A slim brunette with a face full of freckles, seeming to be animated better than the main characters, ran up to the trio. "We've got a Drone infestation on our hands," she said.

"What can we do to help?" asked Hermione.

"Provoke them into attacking you, then fend them all off," replied the girl. "You'll earn a Collector's Card each time you can beat the swarm. But that's no easy feat!"

Just then, a previously camouflaged Elite materialized behind her, grabbing her around the waist and drawing an energy dagger. Just as he was about to make her lose consciousness, she squirmed out of his grasp, drew a combat knife, and stabbed him in the neck, making him faint. After taking a second to recover from the surprise, she hijacked a nearby Ghost, and made herself scarce before the UNSC could arrest her on suspicion of being a Mary Sue.

The trio decided to come back to the Drone infestation later, and continued instead to the large group of students (five, to be exact). When they arrived, Hagrid spoke up.

"Wel'ome to Care of Magical Creatures Class," he said. "I'll be teachin' ya this term. I'd like ter introduce yeh ter Buckbeak. He's a Sentinel. Today, you'll be learnin' how ter ride him."

Floating in midair next to Hagrid was a metal contraption resembling a bird. The students gaped at it with second-class facial expressions of curiosity and fear. "You first, Harry. Just walk up ter Beaky, and give him a bow." I will assume you read "bow" as the act of bending down to show respect, not the thing you find on a present.

Harry walked up and bowed using the first half of his "fainting" animation. The Sentinel nodded with its entire 100,000-year-old metal body, and allowed him to climb onto it. "Hello, Buckbeak," said Harry. "_There_'s a good Sentinel!"

Malfoy, who had apparently awaken since the previous encounter, took a step forward and sneered in a rather lame way. "You won't catch _me_ bowing to that rusty beast," he commented.

The Sentinel turned itself around, aiming for the open areas out in the air. "Your goal," explained Hagrid, "is ter fly through enough bats ter beat the top number on the coun'-er. As soon as yer ready, just click the RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON ter make Beaky fly."

This, of course, was the most completely irrelevant mission ever made for a game, but sure enough, a bunch of groups of bats formed themselves into circles to fly through. Harry launched into the sky atop the ancient machine, and started flying through the circles. He soon found that it was impossible to fly in the wrong direction, and thanks to the inability to turn even 45 degrees off course, he couldn't even hit half the rings he was supposed to be able to reach. However, he remembered the critical order in which to fly through them, and was thus able to unlock the IWHBYD skull after he landed.

"You did epic, dude," applauded Hagrid, his speech now affected by the famous Halo 3 skull. "Have a floating pentagon!" Harry walked through the wizard card he dropped, and added another entry to the essentially useless Folio Universitas.

**Robin**

2537-present

Slim, freckly, brown-haired Mary Sue who survived an attempted Assassination and escaped this story in a hijacked Ghost before she could be arrested as a Mary Sue.

Malfoy could care less. "You won't catch _me_ bowing to that filthy beast," he said. Furious, the metal creature lunged towards him. "IMMA FIRIN MAH LAZOR!" it shouted, and blasted him with a laser beam. "AAAGH!" he screamed. "I'm dying! Look at me! It's killed me!" Reminds me of when Caboose said, "I am dead!"

"Yer not dyin'," said Hagrid. Malfoy got up, showing no signs of injury, and walked off screen with him.

"Do you think he'll be all right?" asked Ron.

"Of course!" replied Harry. "See how badly they animated that? It looks like he's completely fine!"

"You can bet Malfoy will make _something_ out of **this**," commented Hermione.

_And that was EA's idea of a cliffhanger._

I'm kinda running out of ideas for this story. I could definitely work the Shrieking Shack level into the level "The Library" (and I have a number of plans for that part...), but that's about it. Expect an abbreviated version of the game... and then expect a patronum.


End file.
